About

88 Bar is a group blog about technology, media and design in the Greater China region. All of our posts are curated from the various perspectives of our authors. More...

Sign up for our newsletter!

Our authors

Jason Li is a designer, illustrator and consultant currently based in Hong Kong. Once upon a time, he studied engineering and ran a news site about fan translations of video games.

Tricia Wang observes how technology makes us human. Her ethnographic research follows youth and migrants as they process information and desire, remaking cities and rural areas.

Jin Ge aka Jingle is a writer, documentary filmmaker, and NGO organizer based in Shanghai. Jin does sociological research and produces multi-media content on the subjects of Internet subcultures and grass-root organizations in China. He is currently a senior design researcher at IDEO.

An Xiao Mina is an American design strategist, new media artist and digital community builder. She uses technology to build and empower communities through design and artistic expression.

Graham Webster is a Beijing-based writer and analyst working at the intersection of politics, history, and information technology in China and East Asia. He believes technology and information design can reveal some of what what wonkdom can't.

Christina Xu is an observer and organizer of communities, both online and off-. She is particularly interested in youth subcultures, cultural translation & syncretism, and user reappropriations of technology.

Lyn Jeffery is a cultural anthropologist and researcher at the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit group in Palo Alto, California. She studies new experiences enabled by connective technologies.

Tag Archives: 北京大学

These days, I spend a lot of time at Peking University, and I’ve noticed a few interesting things around campus. There are a ton of things you might expect to see at any big university: ads for part time jobs, for print shops, and for student groups and events.

A few, however, caught my eye. Today, here are three pictures and three explanations, beginning with the picture above.

For some reason, someone has written “China Online” in whiteout on a construction barrier near the university’s East Gate, just between the new subway exits. It could be this metal plank served some time outside www.china.org.cn’s offices (the site uses the phrase in its title). Or maybe some student came by and thought a rusty old metal barrier symbolized the experience of going online in China. More likely neither explanation is correct, but I like the picture nonetheless, and I suspect it may end up in a presentation or two.

###

Next, Huawei posters are affixed to an outdoor wall in the southwest part of campus. The message specifically targets youth born after 1990, who at this point represent the vast majority of university students. In China these days, age cohorts are divided by decade rather than by era. To date myself, I’m in the after-80 crowd, one known in this country for being spoiled and individualistic.

This ad targets the after-90 contingent. (In U.S. marketing, both groups are generally considered part of the “millennials.”) Here’s a transcript and translation of the two posters. For the record, Huawei was founded in the ’80s, but its “Huawei Device” division was founded in the early ’90s.

As children of the 90s (“after-90″), we have never needed anyone to define us. We define ourselves! Participate in “After-90 Who are we” and define “Who are we” with Huawei.

Starting today, log on to Tencent Weibo and tweet with the hashtag “#After-90, Who are we#” to comment. For a chance to win a Huawei mobile phone, retweet the official Huawei Device account and @reply three friends.

Huawei. Not just a Fortune 500* company.

*They don’t use the title Fortune, but the “wordwide 500 strongest” designation refers to the Fortune list wherever I’ve seen it.

Every time you use your phone, Huawei silently puts you through;
Every time you get online, Huawei silently connects you;
Every time you send a text, Huawei silently delivers for you;

Huawei, the world’s second largest communications equipment supplier.

No matter if you’re shuttling between the bustling Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Dubai
Or traveling on world landmarks like the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau or Mecca;
No matter if you’re attending sporting events like the World Cup or the Olympics
Or helping you’re working to relieve the disasters of the Wenchuan earthquake or the Indonesian tsunami
Huawei is always by your side.

Huawei, helping more than 2 billion people in more than 140 countries make calls, get online, and send texts.

Yesterday, Huawei was everywhere, but you never saw it.
Today, Huawei mobile phones are at your side, working for you.
Huawei, Fortune 500 in your hand!

What to make of all this? First, I honestly wonder whether any human other than myself has read the whole right poster. Nonetheless, the text reveals the brand recognition and pride Huawei projects within China. This poster was very close to a part of campus that has line of sight to the nearby high-rises of Zhongguancun, the city’s main technology business district. From one vantage near the School of International Studies, a tall building is topped with a Sina logo.

While Peking University does not specialize in technology as much as neighboring Tsinghua, students would recognize Huawei, which has become one of the ubiquitous faces of Chinese technology and computing. The Fortune 500 designation might be seen as a recognition of what they already know: that Huawei is a big deal. It is not as rare a distinction as it used to be, though: Fortune lists 73 Chinese companies in the global top 500, second only to the United States. Of course, Huawei now has its own identity in the United States, but for far less desirable reasons than its market share and products.

###

Finally, I noticed several advertisements for test prep to study abroad, but this panel blows the others away, with prep for IELTS (an English language test important in the U.K. and elsewhere), the GRE (interdisciplinary graduate school entrance exam run from the United States), GMAT (for business school), and TOEFL (an English test used by many U.S. programs). All these posters come from 新东方, or New Oriental.

This is no surprise, perhaps, but it is a reminder that those students (including many of my friends) who have made the leap to international study from China have yet another round of testing on top of the much-discussed stress of the gaokao in China. The GRE poster’s slogan is especially strong: “出国梦想，自己缔造” — roughly, “Found your own dream of going abroad.”

About

88 Bar is a group blog about technology, media and design in the Greater China region. All of our posts are curated from the various perspectives of our authors. More...

Sign up for our newsletter!

Our authors

Jason Li is a designer, illustrator and consultant currently based in Hong Kong. Once upon a time, he studied engineering and ran a news site about fan translations of video games.

Tricia Wang observes how technology makes us human. Her ethnographic research follows youth and migrants as they process information and desire, remaking cities and rural areas.

Jin Ge aka Jingle is a writer, documentary filmmaker, and NGO organizer based in Shanghai. Jin does sociological research and produces multi-media content on the subjects of Internet subcultures and grass-root organizations in China. He is currently a senior design researcher at IDEO.

An Xiao Mina is an American design strategist, new media artist and digital community builder. She uses technology to build and empower communities through design and artistic expression.

Graham Webster is a Beijing-based writer and analyst working at the intersection of politics, history, and information technology in China and East Asia. He believes technology and information design can reveal some of what what wonkdom can't.

Christina Xu is an observer and organizer of communities, both online and off-. She is particularly interested in youth subcultures, cultural translation & syncretism, and user reappropriations of technology.

Lyn Jeffery is a cultural anthropologist and researcher at the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit group in Palo Alto, California. She studies new experiences enabled by connective technologies.